What is Health?

This is a fundamentally important question when considering a “healthy” spine or body.

In the Western World health care is concerned mainly with getting you painfree, and unfortunately in general only lip service is paid to the preventative side of therapy. The commonest way of doing this is with medication until the pain goes, then you are healthy! This is fundamentally wrong and short-sighted.

Health is NOT an absence of symptoms, health is good function, everything working correctly, in a good environment, efficiently. Just focusing on being painfree will not result in good health.

In modern times we are all (well most of us) leading very busy lives, we are having to work harder, for longer, many of us travel ever increasing distances to work. We are under more pressure due to the cost of living, we have less time for ….

family and friends. There is an increase in the number of people being labeled as having behavioural disorders, ADHD, ADD etc and this is just a symptom of the environment that children are now being exposed to as a result of social changes that have taken place over the last 20 years.

All around the western world increasingly  children are babysat with computer games or television, many complain of being bored in the holidays as many have reduced ability to partake in imaginative play.

There is a reason for this neurologically that relates to musculo-skeletal health, more on that in the next issue.

So what does western culture do about this growing epidemic? It gives it a name and medicalises what is essentially behavioural problems due to poor central nervous system stimulation. It prescribes drugs such as Prozac to make you “feel” better, but these drugs don’t make you better. Do you know that in the USA there is now a disease called shyness! The cure? Prozac, but under a different name, how crazy is that?

Many of the serial killing gun sprees in America have been perpetrated by children who have been prescribed Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors SSRI’s. These affect the way the brain processes information and enhance the formation of repetitive patterns of activity, hence the multiple events. Consider also the relatively recent phenomenon of Fibromyalgia, how many people have you heard of that have been diagnosed with this condition. In my opinion this diagnosis should not be made as it labels individuals with a negative outlook that has detrimental effects on that persons prognosis, I’ll explain more on this subject in the next few entries.

I’m sorry if this is getting too morbid, but we really do have a health crisis on our hands if we don’t take steps to encourage children to explore imaginative play, exercise, challenging balance, eating well, communicating with friends and family, the same goes for adults too, although I’m not expecting you to get out the figurines from the attic if they are still there!

These are all positive feedback tasks that enhance and stimulate the central nervous system and lead to a sense of well-being.

Before I finish for now, ask yourself how you can make gentle, progressive and positive changes to your lifestyle that can help you feel better in general and also help you stay free of pain, both physical and emotional.

I’ll be covering the research on these subjects in the next few updates so do have a look soon. If you have children or are thinking of having them, this is information that you really should look at as a matter of utmost concern.

Until the next time.